House Clearance in Wollaton Park

House Clearance for Wollaton Park homes

Thirty or forty years in the same house, cleared after a death or before a move to something far smaller. The volume is the boarded loft, the detached garage at the end of the drive and the books, which are always underestimated.

A clearance here is almost never a void. It is a house somebody has lived in for thirty or forty years, being emptied after a death or before a move to somewhere far smaller, and the family have usually taken what they want before we are called. The volume is not in the reception rooms, which are large and half empty by the time we arrive. It is in the boarded loft, the detached garage at the end of the drive, a workshop bench, a greenhouse and the shed behind it. And it is in the books, which are the heaviest thing these houses contain and the item most often forgotten when somebody guesses at a van size.

Wollaton Park sits in NG8, under Nottingham City Council. One specification across the whole estate, so the fittings repeat from house to house: steel casement windows in the original openings, tiled fireplaces upstairs as well as down, rooms sized for furniture that is no longer made. What differs between two houses on an avenue is how much of it survived.

What we run into on Wollaton Park house clearance jobs

Books have to be handled as weight rather than volume, and the boxes give it away. A removal carton filled with hardbacks is at the limit of what one person should be carrying down a staircase, so they go into small boxes half filled, which means many more trips than the length of shelving suggests. What is on those shelves also splits three ways once it comes off them. Clean stock in reasonable condition goes to reuse and charity outlets. Anything that has stood against a cold outside wall or come down from the loft is generally foxed and smells of damp, nobody will take it, and it goes for card recycling rather than into a general load.

How a Wollaton Park house clearance job actually runs

Access is the one thing in your favour here. A van comes onto the drive and stands at the door, so nothing is carried down a long path or loaded across a public footway, which takes hours off a job this size. What works against us is the route inside. The front door opens into a porch with two doors and a turn between them, and a wardrobe that went upstairs before that porch was glazed will not come back out through it, so it comes down the stair, along the hall and out through the garden doors, or it is taken apart on the landing. The staircase turns at a half landing, and that turn decides the whole plan for the day. Say at the outset what is being kept, put it in one room and shut the door. Tell us whether the garage at the end of the drive is in scope, because loading that means moving the van twice. Every room is photographed before and after, meter readings are taken, anything that looks valuable is bagged and handed to you, and the floors are left swept. The clean is a separate booking on a separate day.

Who books it here

On the practical side: Nearly every house has a drive, so a space is rarely the issue. Where a verge runs under the street trees we keep off it. The houses sit well back, so equipment comes a fair way in from the gate.

We run Wollaton Park on the same round as Wollaton, Lenton and Lenton Abbey.

What we check on every Wollaton Park job

The loft holds more than anybody remembers and it comes down slower than anything else in the house. These roofs have height at the ridge, so most lofts here were boarded at some point, and the boarding is nearly always the middle third with insulation and open joists to either side of it. Whatever went up over forty years is stacked along the edge of those boards, where somebody's reach ran out. The hatch sits on the landing over the stair void, which means there is nothing beneath it to stand on and nothing can be dropped through, so it is handed down one item at a time from a platform. What comes out is suitcases, curtain fabric, camping gear, boxes of paper gone soft with damp and loose glass fibre off insulation that has been walked on. It takes two people, it is dusty work, and it is the part of a quote that surprises people most.

What the house clearance covers

A sample of what is included

• Before we leave: Photographs of every room before we start and after we finish
• Before we leave: Floors swept through and fixings taken out of walls where asked
• Before we leave: Meter readings taken and photographed
• Before we leave: Bins emptied and left kerbside or back in place

That is a sample rather than the whole list. The full house clearance page sets out every section of the scope, what is deliberately excluded and why, how long it takes on each property size, and what tends to go wrong.

The cleaner who comes to your Wollaton Park property is directly employed and vetted by us rather than subcontracted, and the questions that come up before a first booking are answered on the FAQ page. If you are not certain this is the right service, the services hub compares all 14.